We need to talk about the “people” in Metaphor: ReFantazio
Metaphor: ReFantazio isn’t a horror game – it’s a fantasy RPG with a story that gets better as it goes along and a combat system that’s complex and satisfying. But every time I encounter the “humans,” monsters whose visual design looks nothing like any human I’ve ever seen in my life, I feel like Metaphor belongs to both genres.
(Ed. remark: The following contains spoilers for some enemy designs in Metaphor: ReFantazio.)
The first large dungeon you enter Metaphor starts with a bang. The soldiers who charge into battle ahead of you are killed almost immediately by a huge, floating creature with multiple humanoid arms and legs, a skull-like face with outwardly protruding wings and horns, and a torso wrapped in a red egg-like shell.
“There it is,” your new companion Strohl says softly. “That’s a… human.”
This is not the only type of person Metaphor: ReFantazio. Over the course of this dungeon you’ll meet other smaller humans: hulking, bipedal creatures whose torsos are encased in enormous white eggshells. And it’s not just this one dungeon. In all villages and towns Metaphor are regularly terrorized by these people, and no one knows why. And somehow each person looks more bizarre than the last.
The egg thing becomes a bit of a theme for the human designs, as it’s the design for one of the most notable early human boss fights. Here’s some official art for the egg monster in question:
I don’t know what I expected when I smashed into this monster’s eggshell, but it wasn’t armored frog soldiers sitting around a wooden table. I’m about 35 hours into the game, and so far the presence of these monsters – and the reason why everyone calls them ‘humans’ – has yet to be explained. They just Look like this. It’s terrifying to watch, and quite impressive too.
I complimented this game on its originality in monster design to my colleagues, but they were quick to point out that these monsters are very clearly inspired by the work of 16th century Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch. Especially his painting The garden of delights seems to have had a huge influence on this game and its super creepy people.
Bosch’s original painting is enormous, almost 4 meters wide; it is a trifold image, with the Garden of Eden depicted on the left panel, the human world in the center and hell on the right. That far right panel depicts the inspiration of the egg monster, along with a host of other bizarre-looking creatures that seem quite appropriate for Bosch’s conception of hell.
I may not know what the in-fiction deal is with these monsters yet, but at least now I know where these designs come from, and it was fun trying to find similarities between the various people in this game and the designs depicted in the designs of Bosch. paintings. So if you play too MetaphorIt turns out you got a secret art history lesson.